French Kingship and Absolute Monarchy in the Seventeenth Century

It is generally accepted that, from the seventeenth century onward, monarchical power in France was absolute, contrasting with earlier ideas of kingship. But in fact it seems more likely that the earlier conception of kingship, which we may call traditional, remained alive and opposed to absolutism throughout the seventeenth century. This ambivalence in the interpretation of royal power aroused the passions of contemporaries: it was generally agreed that kingship was necessary, and even holy, but the growth of absolutism was not readily accepted. Seventeenth-century men often preferred to think that the growth of absolutism was not the work of the king himself, but of ministers or officials who exercised in his name a power whose limits they exceeded.